His Angel, Her Demon
by Funky In Fishnet
Summary: The end is nearing. Crowley and Anna anticipate in very different ways. But they do it unexpectedly together. A collection of one-shots.
1. Reap and Sow, Together

_**Disclaimer**__: I own nothing_

_**Author Notes**__: Written originally for an SPN Cuddle Comment Fic Challenge, for kijikun._

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**REAP AND SOW, TOGETHER**

Crowley didn't demand much from life. Heaven on Earth for him was staying far away from the blunderings of the Winchesters and living with plenty of the finer things he was owed for his tireless work trading souls. He knew what he liked and woe on anyone who got in the way.

Anna had been a surprise. A fallen star gasping for her light when he'd found her. She hadn't shived him with that pretty blade of hers and that was a kindness. Crowley had repaid her by vanishing her away from the pool of blood he'd found her struggling in during a truly poetic rainstorm and away from the few mortals actually noticing something could be dying and that they were missing the chance to record it and show their friends.

Crowley always repaid his debts.

That was months ago now. And here she was, almost fully recovered, a little pale maybe and weak. She had her fire though, and fire was exactly what it was, no matter what the angels chose to pretend otherwise. It was tempered under her skin and sizzling if anyone was smart enough to look. Crowley admired it, and her determination to see things done. And the way she had with humour and words, like she could untwist his and make new shapes out of it. Who knew a creature of heaven could be so eloquently devious?

So Crowley enjoyed her company. They both had their day jobs – he was keeping under the radar, but doing a little soul business on the side, she was doing reconnaissance to make sure the Winchesters weren't going to break the world a spectacular second time and checking out her leads on dear old Dad – but they always found themselves together when the sun sank away.

Not that any of his associates - a great number dubious and many claiming righteousness - would ever discover this. They'd sell him out to the nearest high-ranker with a taste for angel and blood sport. He valued the life he had and hers.

He was marked. She said it hadn't been deliberate, but there it was, a hand-print scar on his chest. He wasn't exactly thrilled about it. At least she'd been accidentally considerate enough to put it somewhere he could easily cover up. Anyone with power enough would sense it though, that link between the two. Anna had smiled at him, amused at his indignation, and gone to make more toast. Crowley didn't protest when she curled up next to him, melted butter on her fingers and a song on her lips that wasn't a bit angelic. Learned from her human days apparently. It entertained him no end to hear such things from an angel's mouth. If she was that any more.

She muttered scripture under her breath every day, whether she was out of the world or not. Crowley knew as much as any snotty choirboy. It paid to do research. Anna was almost amused at the derisive inflections he gave to her sacred words and the explanations and meanings he had for every story. Sometimes she laughed. She never asked him to stop.

Sleep was another story. She liked to wrap her arms and wings around him, pressing her hand to the mark she'd put on him. Crowley wouldn't say it aloud, unless under other words that she could shuffle through and that was a game she played well, but he found it somewhat soothing. Oh, her touch burned, make no mistake. Angel and demon would always be a damning combination.

But it was a _good_ burn, and that Crowley was entirely familiar with. He welcomed it, held on tight to it in the dark every night. He reckoned she did the same. And those wings of hers, tattered and trailing flame at every lick of his skin. He could see them slowly mending, pinpricks of exquisite pain against his flesh. Sometimes she gasped with the agony and he didn't let her go. Simple as that. But to everyone else, not so simple at all. Crowley's speciality.

Slate and rain piled high above them and there were souls for Crowley to coax out of their owners. Anna would tell him to give them back. She'd plan like any demon worth a drink and conversation with, that tricky blade at her side, and with a smile for Crowley, no matter how twisted up it got.

Crowley didn't demand much. But he knew what he liked, and woe on anyone who got in his way.

_-the end_


	2. Precipice

**_Disclaimer_: **_I own nothing_

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**PRECIPICE**

The pain always came without warning and without mercy. Her brothers' deaths. Lights going out more and more frequently.

Anna could still feel Uriel's blood on her hands.

Then there'd be a hand at her elbow, a voice in her ear, and she'd be whisked out of view and then away to wherever it was they were resting.

Neither of them called these places home.

Whiskey was one of Crowley's constants, poured into expensive cut-glass tumblers. The smell reminded Anna of the man who'd raised her and she'd called Dad. The smell had faintly lingered on him after his poker nights. Whisky and dust and fresh dirt under his fingernails. That was home as much as heaven was ever supposed to be. Sometimes, a lot more.

"You wouldn't believe the day I've had."

Crowley smiled smugly despite his words. The gaze he turned on Anna was heat and burn and silence.

"There was an accountant today. Had the gall to quote Job at me, badly. Education's going downhill in this country."

Anna's lips moved, in amusement and words of scripture, as she inspected an ornate book with a broken spine. It held hopeful familiar passages, a trail of archaic vital possibilities breadcrumbs. Another idea. Anna was surrounded by a spider's web of them. She was becoming a tarantula.

There were bottles clinking, and a remembered pain in Anna's side. Baraciel had been stabbed that morning. He had been forced out of his vessel with no destination specified. Having God absent from heaven made death more of a certainty than angels had ever known before. Anna found it hard to breathe.

Crowley held out a glass with only the faintest smirk at its contents - warm milk and honey. This was her mother – sweet words when Anna was sick and sweating, baking flour and wine, and singing to the noise of the antique radio. Such human things, Anna cradled them.

There was so much she held onto.

She could smell the age of the books, the rain pearling in Crowley's hair, his musky nearness mixed with the quail he'd eaten for lunch in a rich vinegary sauce that still lingered on his tongue.

"Your boys are causing a ruckus," Crowley commented, settling down beside her. "Couldn't find their way with a map and GPS, mind, blundering about in the dark so incompetently the dead can hear them."

"They're the best answer we have."

"Mmmm," Crowley was non-committal for only a moment. "Wouldn't get your hopes up then, darling."

Anna leaned against him. His free hand stroked in her hair, across her skin. Demons didn't consider each other family as angels did. Crowley was (more than) close enough.

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Anna's wings had reformed slowly. They had lost their softness, becoming oversensitive and intricate with scar tissue. Wholeness was an impossibility now. Movement caused pain and something equally excruciating. But she could fly. The winds buoyed her, gentling the razory edge that accompanied her now as naturally as breathing. Anna could still smile into the sun.

_This is the day that the Lord has made._

Crowley had lost his beautiful house; he was reduced to keeping his belly to the ground. Anna's grace gutted like a candle flame. She had nearly lost her wings. It seemed almost fair.

Her Father had created this world. She had grown up in it. There was an urgency inside her as she flew. She watched the sun's rays on the water, children in their sandboxes, trees rippling, humanity greedily spreading out.

Waiting among her books was a piece of soft rich chocolate cake.

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Anna drank in his kisses. Her fingers left marks on his back. Crowley's mouth returned the favour.

"Angel," he hissed between her lips.

Her wings fought for dominance. She laughed, raw and unfinished, and drew blood.

This wasn't a fairytale.

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Crowley went to help Sam and Dean. Anna visited her parents' house. It rang with heady nostalgia, papercut with pain. She slid in, a ghostly shadow, and ran her hands over the initials she'd carved into the bare boards of her bedroom. The poem her Mom had loved still hung in its frame in the kitchen, her Dad's books were stacked on the shelves. There were whispers everywhere.

She stood under the peach tree in the front yard and breathed.

The leaves flamed in fall colours under her feet. Anna had climbed the tree as a child, scraping her knees and hands. She'd feasted on its fruit until juice ran down her chin and she was too sick for dinner. She had learned about gluttony. She had wanted more.

Her Mom had made peach cobbler. Her Dad had taught her that a pit, the hard heart of every tender fruit, could actually be a new beginning. There were words carved somewhere on the trunk and higher that Anna had heard in her head, waking and sleeping, mixing with psalms and broken hosannas. Soon it could all be ash.

When Anna slept, her hand found the mark she had made on Crowley's chest. When she woke, his hand covered hers.

_-the end_


	3. Here Be Monsters

**_Disclaimer: _**_I own nothing_

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**HERE BE MONSTERS**

When it all went down, Anna was sat on the roof. Crowley preferred the comfort of indoor heating and no threat of a messy landing. But there was Anna, enjoying a gale, hair flashing like fire in that strange sort of sunlight. Angels. There was something wrong with them.

Crowley watched from the nearest open window.

"There's death wishes, but you take the angel cake," he smirked. "Apocalypse not enough of a guarantee for you?"

Anna's mouth turned up, though her eyes stayed fixed on all she surveyed. The sky was looking bruised, cloud now starting to roll under the sun. Not normal weather. To be expected by those in the know. There'd been escalating cold spots for months now, not to mention the nasty case of death a lot of humanity was catching in larger stickier numbers.

Death was stalking the streets, having himself a ball.

Crowley offered his glass, full of something cold and classy, anticipating the look he was getting. It reached part of him that stayed quiet to all but her.

"Everything's clearer up here," Anna said at last, when the glass was half-full.

Her wings were making a quiet soft noise in the wind. They were practically out in full view, for people who actually bothered to look up. Doubtful. Crowley eyed them. There was fire at the edges now, like they were just waiting to catch alight. A thought to be savoured.

"Including the end?"

"Who says there's an end?"

And like that, she was back beside him, handing his glass over, smiling as though something else was burning inside her and couldn't he see it too? Crowley liked that look.

One of her wings brushed across his shoulders. It felt like pins and needles used to, not enough to be called pain. Almost pleasure now. It had been deliberate too, from the way the corners of her mouth twisted. He liked that even better.

"What is it you're seeing?" he asked, his glass topped up again and a shade sweeter, just the way he liked it.

"Detroit."

Ah, not a reason to smile. They could be spending their last hours together in that beautiful little villa in Tuscany. But apparently she knew something he didn't. Crowley lifted an eyebrow, his intrigue clear

There was condensation dripping off Anna's fingers.

He pressed against her side as the sky got darker and the Winchesters fumbled their way towards stopping the end of days. God, that was a joke. Somehow, if Crowley didn't believe in miracles before – it was his line of work after all, at a price – he would have allowed them their existence today. The world stayed the way it was.

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They slept in stages, punctuated by heady roars of sensation and bite marks left on her thighs. The burn of her wings was a glorious background. Like every night.

Crowley's tongue traced the Enochian and Latin etched onto her back. It was as clear as her handprint over his heart.

There was bacon in the kitchen, grease was licked off fingers. Anna tucked herself under his chin, quiet and fragile for a while. Crowley's lips met her temple. He listened to her heartbeat in time with his fingers. It was still going.

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Anna was out of bed early again. He could smell her on the sheets – human and angel both under the shampoo and shower soap. Potent.

And there she was, wrapped up in one of his old coats – not too shabby, the last time he'd worn it had been Athens several centuries ago and it still had that wine stain on the cuff. Call it sentiment. And coffee was brewing a halo around her head. Oh, the irony.

The table was covered in maps and she had that look in her eyes like the world was going to be dragged away from the edge. A crusading angel. That stirred memories.

"Sam's gone," she told the maps. "He took Lucifer and Michael with him."

Ah. The world saved by a noble sacrifice. The more things changed…..

Crowley poured himself a coffee and ventured into her personal space. Tuscany was still calling, and it would be glorious, but Anna clearly had other needless and more death-seeking plans. And here he was, not in Tuscany either. "So what's the daring and suicidal plan?"

Anna leaned towards him, fingers and feathers sending starbursts of pleasure/pain through him. He slid a hand down her side, a sly lingering rejoiner.

Her look was all anticipation, something crackling through her ready to spark off touchpaper.

"We're going off the edge of the map."

Crowley smirked, skirting a hand across the creased paper into unmarked territory. Angel had a death wish, and he happened to have a hell hound who was desperate to stretch its legs. "Ah, here be monsters."

Anna grinned, her teeth as sharp as her knife. He liked that smile, it promised bite.

"I'm counting on it."

_-the end_


End file.
